Hudson Jameson, a communications manager at the Ethereum Foundation and blockchain developer, has revealed that funding for a third-party audit of Ethereum’s (ETH) proposed ASIC-resistant, programmatic proof-of-work (ProgPoW) consensus algorithm has been received.

50,000 Dai Raised To Independently Audit ProPoW

Jameson, a computer science graduate from the University of North Texas, confirmed during a bi-weekly meeting between Ethereum developers (on April 26th, 2019) that adequate funding had been acquired to perform an independent audit of ProgPoW.

As mentioned during the last conference call between Ethereum’s core developers, the fundraising target of 50,000 Dai, an Ethereum-based, USD-pegged stablecoin, was reached. Funds for the ProgPoW audit were reportedly acquired by conducting various crowdfunding campaigns and also by collecting donations.

Why Use ProgPoW?

Application Specific Integrated Circuits, or ASICs, are specialized and a relatively expensive type of hardware that may be used to mine cryptocurrencies. High-performance ASICs allow users to mine certain cryptos which use a specific hashing algorithm.

Miners using less expensive hardware such as GPUs, which are mainly intended for video games, may not be able to mine cryptocurrencies as easily or effectively as miners using more powerful ASICs. However, the developers of several cryptocurrencies have created what are referred to as ASIC-resistant mining algorithms for their blockchain networks.

ASIC-resistant mining protocols have been developed in a manner which should allow all miners a fair and equal opportunity to mine cryptoassets on a blockchain-based platform. Proponents of ASIC-resistant mining algorithms argue that they promote higher levels of decentralization. This, as they prevent miners with more expensive hardware from having any meaningful advantage over the other miners on a crypto network.

As explained on its official Github page, ProgPoW has been developed to “close the efficiency gap available to specialized ASICs.” In order to allow all miners a (near) equal opportunity to mine ETH, ProgPoW was created in a manner that is “pre-tuned for the most common hardware utilized” on the Ethereum blockchain.

Greg Colvin, a Ethereum developer and project advisor, has previously noted that the Ethereum network’s community members have had doubts regarding whether to use ProgPoW. Colvin remarked (last month):

We’re going back to stuff we were tired of talking about months ago. We decided that the only issue is whether there were errors in the algorithm, backdoors in the algorithm, anything like that. [...] Not arguments between the GPU people and the ASIC people. That will unroll over time.